Who

Along with partner Kim Hastreiter, Hershkovits is a founder and publisher of downtown arts and culture magazine Paper, required reading for hipsters everywhere.

Backstory

Herskovits and Hastreiter met when they worked together at SoHo Weekly, the alt paper that chronicled the downtown scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. When the paper went belly-up in 1982, the pair decided to re-launch the concept as a 'zine. After looking around for funding, they decided to bootstrap it, talking a friend into coughing up $4,000 to publish the magazine as a fold-out poster to save a few dollars. Without the money for office space, they convinced journalist friends to let them work out of the Times offices. As Paper grew—and went from fold-up poster to proper magazine—it remained a shoe-string operation and Herskovits had to sustain himself with freelance work for over a decade.

Of note

Although the magazine is no cash cow, it's now marginally profitable, and has managed to survive against all odds for close to three decades. While Hershkovits and Hastreiter are practically geriatric, they've kept the magazine fresh with a staff of young hipsters who fill the pages with ill-kempt indie rockers, avant-garde artists, trannies, and other downtown staples. But it's Hershkovits who writes the Papermag.com blog Eye Spy, and with Hastreiter he's published two Paper-branded books: 1999's From AbFab to Zen: Paper's Guide to Pop Culture and 2004's 20 Years of Style: The World According to Paper. In something of a career non-sequitur, in 1986 he authored an unauthorized biography of decidedly non-indie actor Don Johnson.

No joke

Hershkovits made an abortive run for mayor against Rudy Giuliani and David Dinkins in 1993. One campaign promise: that he wouldn't cover his balding pate with a hair piece.

Personal

He and his wife, Brigitte, have one daughter and live in the East Village. They also have a weekend house upstate in Phoenicia.